Sunday, January 31, 2016

Delve into the seedy underbelly of the art world, looking at smuggling, theft, fakes, and fraud, with this free online course.

The devastation caused by the trafficking of
illicit antiquities and the theft of art has gained widespread public
attention in recent years.

Confronted with the pock-marked “lunar
landscapes” of archaeological sites in Iraq and Syria, freshly
decapitated Buddha sculptures in Cambodia and empty frames on the walls
of museums, we face a difficult question: how do we protect our heritage
from theft, illegal sale, and destruction?In Antiquities Trafficking and Art Crime we will tackle this question together.

Shed light on the grey market for stolen art

On this free online course, taught by researchers from the University of Glasgow’s Trafficking Culture Project, you will gain a better understanding of:

the criminal networks that engage in antiquities trafficking and art crime;

the harmful effects that these phenomena have on communities and society as a whole;

and what scholars, police, and lawmakers are doing to protect our heritage.

By combining cutting-edge research in the fields
of criminology, archaeology, anthropology, sociology, art history,
museums studies, and law, we will shed light on the grey market for
stolen art.

Learn how and why art is stolen, trafficked, found, and returned

In Week 1, we will track how ancient artefacts are looted
from archaeological sites, trafficked across multiple international
borders, and end up in the possession of some of the world’s most
respectable museums and collectors.

In Week 2, we will learn about crimes of fine art: heists, fakes, and vandalism.In Week 3, we will discuss the ethical, legal, and emotional issues associated with the return of stolen cultural objects.

Art and antiquities represent our collective
cultural identity and crimes against art affect all of us. When an
artefact is looted or an artwork is stolen, we have ALL been robbed. We
must work together to protect our heritage before it is too late.
Antiquities Trafficking and Art Crime is a great first step.If you want to find out more about the financial implications of art crime, have a look at this blog post from Meg Lambert: Does art crime pay? 5 stolen artefacts and what they sold for.

Saturday, January 30, 2016

The Journal of Art Historiography exists to support and
promote the study of the history and practice of art historical
writing. The historiography of art has been strongly influenced by
traditions inaugurated by Giorgio Vasari, Winckelmann and German
academics of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Consequent to
the expansion of universities, museums and galleries, the field has
evolved to include areas outside of its traditional boundaries.

There is a double danger that contemporary scholarship will forget
its earlier legacy and that it will neglect the urgency and rigour with
which those early debates were conducted. The earlier legacy remains
embedded in ‘normal’ practice. More recent art history also stands in
need of its own scrutiny. The journal is committed to studying art
historical scholarship, in its institutional and conceptual foundations,
from the past to the present day in all areas and all periods.

This journal will ignore the disciplinary boundaries imposed by the
Anglophone expression ‘art history’ and allow and encourage the full
range of enquiry that encompassed the visual arts in its broadest sense
as well as topics now falling within archaeology, anthropology,
ethnography and other specialist disciplines and approaches. It will
welcome contributions from young and established scholars and is aimed
at building an expanded audience for what has hitherto been a much
specialised topic of investigation.

Besides articles, it will accept notes, reviews, letters,
bibliographical surveys and translations. It will be published every
June and December and include both peer-reviewed and commissioned
contributions.

It will be the first contemporary journal dedicated specifically to
the study of art historiography and its ambition is to make it the point
of first call for scholars and students interested in that area. It is
being supported by the Department of the History of Art at the
University of Birmingham. In collaboration with Ashgate it also
publishes Monographs in Art Historiography.

Sign in to view
unpublished material. Material that has been published is made
completely available to the public. Material that is unpublished can be
viewed only by researchers who have obtained the necessary permission to
study the material in person.

The project
attempts to capture the spatial domain of heritage, with a current
focus on Africa, by accurately recording its physical and architectural
structures , their dimensions and their positions. Sites are seen in the
context of their physical environment, and wherever possible, the
topography of landscapes surrounding the documented sites is mapped
based on satellite images and aerial photography. The documentation
project was initiated to increase international awareness of Africa’s
heritage and to provide material for research and education while, at
the same time, creating a permanent metrically accurate record of
important sites for restoration and conservation purposes. Data
generated by the project have been, and are currently , used for
conservation interventions in a number of sites.The project is based on state-of-the art data acquisition and
presentation technology which are used to generate Geographic
Information Systems, 3D computer models and other spatial data. The data
are captured during, often complex and difficult, field campaigns of
the project team. The team has completed documentation work in Ghana,
Mali, Cameroon, Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda,
Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Algeria, and South Africa as well as in Abu Dhabi
and Jordan. Further documentation work is planned for other
African sites. The heritage collection is conceptualised as an
integrated and interactive model, in which contextual data are closely
linked to spatial data. It is the vision of the documentation project
that the Zamani Project will not only be used as an information source
but that the spatial data and representation of the sites will form the
basis for additional site documentation and contribute to site
management.The Zamani Project was initiated in 2004 in the Geomatics Division of
the University of Cape Town and funded by the Andrew W. Mellon
Foundation from 2004 until 2012. Presently the project is funded through
the independent “Zamani African Cultural Heritage Sites Trust", which
was established by the Philanthropist and UCT Alumni Duncan Saville.

The Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt (JARCE)
was established in 1962 to foster research into the history, languages,
social systems, and archaeology of the Egyptian people. The journal
welcomes article submissions on all periods and aspects of Egyptian
civilization. JARCE publishes articles in English, French, or German.

The following published papers are now available
online as preprints (i.e., prior to their appearance in an issue of the
print journal).

Aug 17, 2015

An Egyptian Mummy of the Late Old Kingdom in the Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University

Welcome to the virtual home of Digital Roman
Heritage, an international research collaboration network that brings
together Digital Humanities initiatives with regard to the physical,
artistic and literary legacy of Rome. The main aims of this network are
to share best practices, and to facilitate the digital linkage between
projects from various disciplines related to the city and symbol of
Rome.

The primary focus of the project is notice and comment on open access material relating to the ancient world, but I will also include other kinds of networked information as it comes available.

The ancient world is conceived here as it is at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University, my academic home at the time AWOL was launched. That is, from the Pillars of Hercules to the Pacific, from the beginnings of human habitation to the late antique / early Islamic period.

AWOL is the successor to Abzu, a guide to networked open access data relevant to the study and public presentation of the Ancient Near East and the Ancient Mediterranean world, founded at the Oriental Institute, University of Chicago in 1994. Together they represent the longest sustained effort to map the development of open digital scholarship in any discipline.